


a life half-empty

by Ester



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Love at First Sight, M/M, Meet-Cute, interior decorating is the sixth love language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:20:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29610708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ester/pseuds/Ester
Summary: Seungkwan gets to have so many good things: health, income, housing, friends. It only makes sense that he has to give up something because no one can be good at everything. No one gets to have everything. If the thing Seungkwan can’t have is love, then, so be it.// Seungkwan falls in love.
Relationships: Boo Seungkwan/Chwe Hansol | Vernon
Comments: 36
Kudos: 142
Collections: Seventeen Holidays





	a life half-empty

**Author's Note:**

> originally wrote this for 17hols round 1 for my own "stray Italian greyhound" lyric prompt because i am a parody of myself. baby's first verkwan!

The front door to Seungkwan’s new apartment is tricky. The lock is stiff, so when he tries to open it one-handed, it tends to fight back, and he needs to bodycheck the door to get it going. It wouldn’t be so much of an issue if he could use his other hand to press on the door a little. It would do the trick. But he’s always getting back home after a long day at the kindergarten, tote bag on one shoulder, groceries clutched at the crook of his arm, and a takeout cup in hand. He keeps busy and he’s an independent Boo, so bodycheck he must.

Today, he’s got an iced Americano, a mountain of brightly coloured felt and crayons, and a crate of mandarin oranges. He comes in, pushes the door closed with a hip wiggle, kicks his shoes off, and heads to the kitchen nook to set down his haul of fruit. It’s a nice, breezy October Friday, he’s starting a weekend blissfully free of plans, and the barista at his usual coffee shop complimented his new hat. Deservedly so, it’s pink and delightful.

Tonight, he gets to see his friends at the bar for a self-allotted two hours, and he already has his fool-proof escape lie for why he can’t drink more than two glasses of wine and must leave at 10 pm when Jeonghan and Seungcheol inevitably start flirting like they haven’t been together for five years. He has enough anecdotes and fun little thoughts stored up that he can be on his A-game for those two hours, and then he gets to come back home and take a bath, put whatever volleyball game is happening on in the background, and not think until the morning.

Structure and balance are good, he always tells Jeonghan, who has no internal rhythm or self-discipline, who always floats through his days, relying on luck and Seungcheol to navigate life. Seungkwan doesn’t have either of those things, but he has structure and balance, and, unlike Jeonghan, no more student debt. He’s worked hard to be where he is and to have the things he has, and he’s done it all on his own. By almost all accounts, he’s ahead of the curve. He has a permanent job he likes, a nice apartment that, while not big, is cosy and clean and welcoming, and the blood pressure of a marathon runner according to his doctor. Getting to this place has required some sacrifices and denying himself some things. Being alone has been a conscious choice and being lonely, sometimes, is a small price to pay for all of it, really.

After all, balance goes both ways. Seungkwan gets to have so many good things: health, income, housing, friends. It only makes sense that he has to give up something because no one can be good at everything. No one gets to have everything. If the thing Seungkwan can’t have is love, then, so be it. He hasn’t been any good at it, anyway. The two boyfriends he’s had were both short-lived things that ended with Seungkwan questioning whether he’d liked either one of them in the first place. The first one told Seungkwan that he was embarrassing, in the end, mean-eyed and spiteful. The second one only ever talked about himself and never cared enough about Seungkwan to even discover how embarrassing he was. He doesn’t like being bad at things, so, really, it’s easier this way. He’ll have his friends and his family, and he can be the fun, independent uncle, who sends the nieces and nephews the most money on Seollal. No one gets to have everything.

Before heading out to the bar, Seungkwan picks out a nice sky-blue silk shirt, styles his hair so that it falls purposefully casually over his eyes, and makes sure to blot all the shine off his cheeks. There are too many pictures out in the world of him looking oily in dark bars, squished between a red-faced Mingyu and a half-asleep Soonyoung.

Tonight, the group looks small and manageable as he approaches the same corner booth he’s sat in almost every week for a year now. Jeonghan and Seungcheol are crammed into the U-bend of the booth, with Mingyu and Jihoon flanking them on one side and a person he doesn’t recognise on the other. They are sitting with their back to Seungkwan, as he approaches, but Seungkwan doesn’t know anyone with the kind of wavy hair that’s just barely visible under their beanie. 

“Seungkwan!” Jihoon, of all people, cheers loudly with his beer glass. He’s all narrow-eyed with joy and flushed with alcohol, like a cat well-petted. Seungkwan gives him a jaunty little wave, just as the new person turns around to look.

If Seungkwan’s hand jerks a little weirdly, seeing his face, nobody comments on it.

It’s a good face. Angular. Chiselled.

“That’s me,” Seungkwan smiles and sketches out a little hand twirl at himself to drive the point home, “I don’t think we’ve met.”

Mingyu takes a breath to make introductions like a good hostess, but the new person cuts in.

“Chwe Hansol. Good to meet you,” he says with a nod. It’s a perfectly average greeting, a perfectly mundane way to come across a new person. But there’s something that feels like a sigh that runs down Seungkwan’s whole body at the sight of him. His face feels familiar. It’s easy to sit down in the one free seat next to Hansol and sniff at the drink in front of him to consider ordering it. Hansol offers him a sip and it’s some foreign wheat ale that tastes like medicine, which Seungkwan tells him, and Hansol just smiles, like he’s delighted. Like he doesn’t find Seungkwan embarrassing at all.

Apparently, Hansol has just started working at the same recording company as Jihoon and Seungcheol. He’s a producer, freshly back home from the United States. It seems like he should have a thousand interesting, fantastical, impressive stories to tell of all the famous people he has met, but instead, he asks Seungkwan about his life, again and again. Seungkwan answers, again and again, and starts to feel dread souring at the back of his throat.

Hansol is so good. He listens and he smiles, a little lazy but very genuine. His eyes are a lovely warm hazel colour, he chuckles at Seungkwan’s jokes, his hair is softly brown, and he pays attention better than anyone Seungkwan has ever met. It’s intoxicating. Seungkwan feels drunk off his attention alone and he’s only halfway through his first glass of wine. He considers bailing before his own two-hour limit is even up. The balance is off, the structure compromised. If Hansol smiles at him one more time, he’s going to topple headfirst into something he’d carefully fenced off ages ago.

“It’s really nice, I just moved,” Seungkwan hears himself say, almost outside his own body or perhaps from very far back in his brain, “The lock on the front door is a little janky, I don’t know why, but otherwise I love it.”

“Have you tried oiling it? That helped my bike lock,” Hansol offers, and looks like he’s actually invested in the condition of Seungkwan’s front door. Hansol bikes to work. He likes West Coast hip hop even though he was born in New York, he got sick after trying to eat only Soylent for a day, he skateboards for fun, and his little sister can beat him at arm wrestling. Seungkwan’s head feels full to the brim with everything he already knows about him, and they met half an hour ago.

“No, I haven’t. I’m not really handy like that,” Seungkwan says and it’s a little bit of a lie because he did rewire his own ceiling lamps, but sometimes, he’s learned after trial and error, it’s better to offer people flaws.

“Me neither,” Hansol shrugs, “But it’s easy. You just pour it in there. I can give you the rest of mine if you’d like to try it out.”

“Are you offering me lube, Chwe Hansol?” Seungkwan says, mostly as a joke, but also pitched low enough in tone that it doesn’t alert any of the others. Jeonghan and Seungcheol are whispering something needlessly close to each other’s faces. Mingyu and Jihoon are giggling loudly and twice as drunk as the rest. The corner of Hansol’s wide mouth twitches and he doesn’t blush even a little. He just looks at Seungkwan, knowingly, and presses their thighs that are already touching just a little tighter together.

Seungkwan should bail. He should get up, right then, and smile a little ruefully at Hansol, and make his prepared excuse. Go home and rebalance. Things are sliding out of place like furniture on the sinking Titanic. He should readjust the course. But, for once, wanting weighs more on the scales than discipline, and the unasked question hovers between them, begging for an answer.

“Yeah,” Seungkwan nods, a little jerky. A little breathless. Only then does Hansol flush just the barest bit.

Exits are Seungkwan’s specialty. He can leave any crowd, at any time, and have them chorusing well-wishes after him. He can definitely get them out of the bar without too much fanfare. He just needs a moment to come up with a plan.

Before he can even let Hansol know this, he’s already gently ushering Seungkwan out of his seat, grabbing their jackets from the hook on the side of the booth.

“We’re leaving, good night,” Hansol says, not even _to_ their friends, mostly just _at_ them, takes Seungkwan by the elbow, and steers him out the bar entrance before even Yoon Jeonghan can come up with anything to screech after them. When the chilly evening air hits Seungkwan and Hansol holds his jacket out to him, Seungkwan looks at him and thinks, for the first time in what will be a long life, that he might be in love.

The funny thing is that after their dramatic exit, they don’t end up having sex. Not that night. Seungkwan enters Hansol’s apartment and all romantic thoughts slip from his mind because Hansol’s apartment is a dystopian nightmare.

His living room is literally empty except for a huge, ridiculously expensive grey couch and an even bigger, even more stupidly expensive television that lords over the bare room, gleaming menacingly. Everything is in shades of grey, from the wall to the ceiling. There isn’t a single knickknack or a decorative pillow anywhere in sight.

Seungkwan sits Hansol down on his tragic furniture and pulls up Coupang on his phone. Two hours later, they haven’t even kissed, but at least Hansol has a living room on the horizon that doesn’t make Seungkwan want to cry. Midway through, Seungkwan catches himself for a moment, sees himself out of his own body, bulldozing into a stranger’s life and keeping them a polite hostage, being too much too fast like his first ex said he was. He stops to look over at Hansol, sitting next to him, a faint wrinkle of concentration between his perfect eyebrows, as he considers the colour swatches for a coffee table. He seems relaxed and engaged, tapping on the phone to zoom closer to a nice pink marble option.

On the third hour, Seungkwan is in the middle of explaining why Hansol needs an area rug, when Hansol leans over, pushes the phone down onto Seungkwan’s lap, and kisses him. Soft and quick, nothing dramatic, nothing demanding. Just a careful hand on his jaw and a brief pressure against his mouth.

“Just wanted to get that out of the way,” he laughs at Seungkwan’s blinking face and brings Seungkwan’s phone back up between them by his wrist, “Now. What’s an ottoman?”

It turns out that oiling the lock doesn’t keep Seungkwan’s door from jamming, even though the next day he pours half a bottle in there. But that, too, works out in the end. Hansol can open the door, while Seungkwan holds his groceries. Balance and structure are good, but so is teamwork.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! i'd love to hear your thots and onions on verkwan in the comments, it'd mean a lot to me, especially bc i haven't written these two before. i'm also on twitter @yilinges.


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